Sixty-six percent. That's how much of a child’s body was covered in burns once they arrived at the Instituto Nacional de Salud del Nino in San Borja, Lima, Peru. It became immediately apparent to doctors on staff that skin grafts would be needed to save the child's life. What was less apparent was where they were going to find donor tissue in time to do so.
The team in Lima went to work and found the needed tissue 3,000 miles away at the Shriners Hospital for Children in Galveston, Texas. The next piece of the puzzle fell into the lap of James Evins.
An operations manager at World Cargo Solutions, Evins spends his day-to day handling the most time-sensitive shipments from around the world as they come his way. When World Cargo Solutions received a skin graft donation from The Shriners Hospitals for Children in Galveston, Texas, it was Evins who had to get it to the Southern Hemisphere as fast as possible.
After considering his options, Evins elected to use American Airlines Cargo.
The ExpediteTC service, American's active and passive full-service cold chain solution, serves a broad range of temperature-controlled shipping needs and was ideal for this kind of shipment. But according to Evins, it was his customer service experience that set American apart from other options.
"[Mindy Wright-Roper] explained that the ExpediteTC service would be the best solution, and provided details about the benefits and information about handling procedures at each station," he said. "I immediately gave up on [competing service] and booked with American Airlines."
"You don't earn that degree of trust with slightly higher, on-time performance or a couple percentage better pricing on average," Evins said. "It's earned by hard work and pride in the performance. It's earned by accountability. It's earned by a day in and day out continuous effort to be a reliable partner in the industry, regardless of how much volume I'm moving or the size of my company."
"You don't earn that degree of trust with slightly higher, on-time performance or a couple percentage better pricing ... It's earned by hard work and pride in the performance."
— James Evins, World Cargo Solutions
When customers book with American, it marks the beginning of a relationship – not the end. And in the days following the booking, American worked with Evins to troubleshoot a last-minute change and offered multiple route options to solve the problem. With efficient, state-of-the-art procedures and strong interline partners, American is consistently prepared to deliver uninterrupted, temperature-controlled service, even in hard-to-reach locations.
Days after partnering with American, doctors in Peru received a life-saving skin graft and gave a young patient hope for recovery. The shipment was the first time that tissue processed at the Galveston Shriners Hospital was ever transported overseas for use on a patient treated in another country.
When Evins followed up a few months later, he learned that the patient's wounds were "almost closed and, after another surgery, would be 100% closed."
To learn more about our pharmaceutical solutions, ask your sales representative for customized solutions or visit aacargo.com/ExpediteTC.
